SpotCheck and Productivity

Even the sharpest developer can be thwarted by something as simple as a one-minute wait for compilation. According to cognitive psychologists, such an interruption is more than simply an inconvenience; it disrupts short-term memory through mechanisms of "decay" and "interference"... in layman's terms, you "lose your train of thought".

Furthermore, when a developer expects a long build time, he or she is likely to try to do as much work as possible before compiling. This is counterproductive, forcing the developer to remember even more. Worse yet, the developer often lengthens the interruption -- "might as well go get a cup of coffee". If these effects build upon each other, productivity may decline exponentially as delays lengthen.

SpotCheck provides immediate error checking and feedback so that the programmer can rapidly dispense with the arcane details of syntax, type checking, etc, and can continue to concentrate on the purpose of the Java code at hand.